A Quantitative Analysis of Online Dating

imjustatomato writes "Never before has something so human and primitive as dating been reducible to such discrete values. A study analyzes the data of an online dating service. When do you like someone like yourself? Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match. Other interesting findings are: men initiate 73.3% of messages, but their initiations are 17.9% less likely to be reciprocated; 78.2% of messages are never responded to."

Comments

That's odd...

[Mr. Samuel]

100% of my messages are never responded to.

RTFA?

[ari_j]

Why not link to TFA? Here is a more direct link to the research. I wonder why we got linked from the summary to another summary. Maybe because the summary is new today but the research is 2 years old.

Anyhow, none of the numbers seem all that surprising, except that 55% of active members are women (63% of all members were men).

Re:RTFA?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Anyhow, none of the numbers seem all that surprising, except that 55% of active members are women

No, no, no, no. We're talking about the internet here. You must add a qualifier. 55% of active members say that they're women.

double entendre

[macadamia_harold]

Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match.

Uhh, yeah. I'm going to guess that the phrase "wants children" means something different, depending on whether you're on a dating site, or on alt.sex.lolita. Yes?

Religion and Smoking

[sleepwellmyfriend]

I always thought discrimination against religion and smoking were bidirectional. Religious people are more likely to not want to date non-religious types, than the other way around. Non-smokers will prefer to date non-smokers, but I doubt smokers have much of a preference. It would be interesting to see if there are characteristics that work in the opposite manner. Opposites attract, don't they? Guess not

This surprises me not one bit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's fair to say that there's a lot of factors at play here:

1. Communication. Email (and other text-based mediums) miss out on several communication cues. Tone of voice, body language, etc. are important to figure out exactly what is meant. I can write something and mean it in one way, but that doesn't mean the person at the other end will read it that way - they could just as easily (especially if they're having a bad day) cast it in a negative tone in their mind.
2. Expectations. Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find out that men (and women!) online are looking for the "perfect partner". Newsflash, people: there's no such thing. Everybody has their flaws. Doesn't matter who they are.
3. Appearances (which comes in with expectations, I suppose.) If you're not 'beautiful', you're evidently not worth knowing. Dig a little deeper, people. There's more to beauty than stick figures like you see in those fashion magazines ...

My experiences with online dating? I've met five, maybe six, people that way. One's a decent friend still. One, it's too early to tell (but my feeling is "nothing more than friendship".) The rest, I haven't seen much of beyond the early meetings.

All in all, my Quest for Non Single Status shall henceforth be conducted off the computer. Between the cost, the frustration of usually never getting a message back (I'd rather hear "thanks, but I don't think it'd work out" than never hear back at all - at least then it's a clean break), and generally getting out and about in the real world a bit more than when I was a teenager, I think I'll be much happier for it. Do I need somebody? Hell no. Do I want somebody? Yes. But I'd rather be single than with the wrong person.

my observation

[aliscool]

I recently spent two months on Match.com and by and am pleased with the end results... I am dating someone I met on there.
You really have a hard time weeding through the mass amounts of spam email (I realize you are looking for someone in Virginia, but Montana is only 6 hours away), the obvious scammers mostly with .ru email addresses. The old I need a visa and it costs 600 American dollars thing.
Also there are a fair amount of women that fall into the FREAK category.

I would disagree with this point made in the paper "Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match."
From my limited experience on Match, I think the most important thing women were looking for was income range. I initially had that on my profile and got swamped with replies, after hiding that bit they slowed way down.

Not quite surprised here

[tftp]

No wonder geeks do not get much of replies. The very fact that a geek is sitting in his fortress, behind the flickering terminal, surrounded by 16 different and very old Linux boxen, clearly indicates that his romantic needs are best addressed by a robot or by some pr0n that is plentiful out there.

And from the other side of the equation, no sensible female of the species will choose to date a geek that is clearly ill-adapted socially, is not likely to resemble a movie star from her wall poster, and probably will not fare well in the salary department if he ever manages to leave his basement (many choose not to.)

And with respect to children, many men dislike children and don't want them at all. They are expensive to maintain, and pointless to raise in the first place. The society changed so much in the last 100-200 years that a large family that was a great advantage to a peasant is now a death warrant in many professional areas, financially and time-wise. Parents nowadays are expected to sink up to a million dollars into a child, with no ROI whatsoever. The parents become slaves to their children, working most of their productive life to maintain the family.

Re:Not quite surprised here

[CosmeticLobotamy]

If you'rea nerd you tend to look at things (everything) logically, if you take that approach to having children, there really is no logical reason to do so in this day and age.

If you can say that, then you can say there's no logical reason to have sex or play baseball or create wealth. Some people want kids, others don't. There's no logic there. There's logic in not having them if you can't afford them, but that's pretty much it, I think.

Re:Not quite surprised here

[Aris Katsaris]

If you take emotion out of the equation, then there's no point in doing anything at all, given how happiness and unhappiness, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, are all emotions. Being inert as a rock is logical when there's no boredom or other emotion to make you desire activity -- letting civilization collapse is as "logical" as the opposite, when there's no emotion that makes one desire its continuation. Logic is only a method used to achieve end goals you've already set; logic is absolutely meaningless without *emotion* first setting what those goals should be.

okcupid

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth (and I imagine it's worth a lot to slashdot readers), my experiences with online dating have always been best with okcupid. It is free, novel (fun matching tests), and its participants always seem, to me, to be more appealing than those of eharmony, match.com, and all the other paysites.

Depends where you are located

[LilGuy]

I've had much success with "internet dating", but it seems to depend on where I live. When I lived in Houston the girls were plentiful and fun. Living in Des Moines is a completely different story. The only ones I get replies from here are trollish freaks that probably couldn't get a date if they didn't post fake pictures of some model, or at least some hot chick from down the street. I'm still amazed at the enormous differences in both quality and quantity of women from the online world between the two cities.

Re:Online dating

[ozmanjusri]

and one just didn't work out at all.

That'd be the one you married then?

Please date me!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello, im a desprate virgin tieered of masterbating to videos of other people having sex. I spend all day at the computer, and i need someone to cook my food, do my laundry, and clean the house, as i have just moved out of my moms basement. I also require you to do all of this in sexy outfits, and have sex with me whevere i want, further, no naging is allowed, or i will reprogram you in the basement

Please resond this time HotWifeWannabe1337!!, you dident seem to get my first 26 messages...

-- Anoymous Coward

Qualities in a woman

[threaded]

When I was 14, I hoped that one day I would have a girlfriend. When I was 16 I got a girlfriend, but there was no passion, so I decided I needed a passionate girl with a zest for life.

In college I dated a passionate girl, but she was too emotional. Everything was an emergency; she was a drama queen, cried all the time and threatened suicide. So I decided I needed a girl with stability.

When I was 25 I found a very stable girl but she was boring. She was totally predictable and never got excited about anything. Life became so dull that I decided that I needed a girl with some excitement.

When I was 28 I found an exciting girl, but I couldn't keep up with her. She rushed from one thing to another, never settling on anything. She did mad impetuous things and made me miserable as often as happy. She was great fun initially and very energetic, but directionless. So I decided to find a girl with some real ambition.

When I turned 31, I found a smart ambitious girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground and married her. She was so ambitious that she divorced me and took everything I owned.

Now, I am older and wiser, and am looking for a girl with big tits.